A parcel from Hyperion
has just brought me three earlier Brabant Ensemble recordings,
together with my review copies of this new CD and the most
recent Gothic Voices reissue (CDH55295– The Study of
Love). The Gothic Voices are a well-known quantity – I have reviewed
most of their recent reissues on Hyperion’s budget Helios
label and those which I haven’t received as review copies
I have bought – but I have somehow missed the earlier Brabant
Ensemble recordings, though my Musicweb colleagues have
praised them all and I note that their Gombert recording
(CDA67614) has reached the final stage of voting for the
2008 Gramophone Awards.

My one reservation about
that Gothic Voices recording was that I wouldn’t encourage
a newcomer to early music to start there: the music of
Machaut and his contemporaries can sound quite alien to
those not used to the idiom. Move on a century or so from
Machaut to the music of Morales on this new CD and the
music becomes much more amenable to the modern listener.
Add to that the quality of these performances, directed
by Stephen Rice who, like Christopher Page, combines his
work as a don with directing the ensemble, and the excellence
of the recording and you have a winning combination.

The three opening works
are settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, employed
in the pre-Vatican 2 Latin rite as lessons at Matins on
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The first
item is the third lesson for Good Friday, the second and
third are the first and second lessons respectively for
Holy Saturday in the lectionary employed in Morales’ time.
Fortunately all the texts and translations are given – even
if you have a copy of the Tridentine Missal or of the Holy
Week manual with the restored Latin rite of 1955, you won’t
find these readings, since the texts of Lamentations employed
there were considerably abridged from what had been in
use in Morales’ time.

Later composers would
produce very affective settings of this music, usually
performed in anticipation on the previous afternoon or
evening in the ceremony of Tenebræ. Iberian music
of this period can, of course, be very dramatic, but Morales’ settings
are very much quieter, in what Grove aptly calls
a sober homophonic style – less dramatic and affective
than, say, those of Charpentier: this is the music of quiet
contemplation. Though sometimes complex, the music never
sounds complicated: more like the settings of Charpentier’s
contemporary François Couperin. For the Charpentier settings
of Tenebræ, see my recent review,
and for the more reflective settings of Couperin, see my
follow-up review.

Morales sets the letters
of the Hebrew alphabet which open each lesson, but not
with the elaborate melismata which were later to
become fashionable. The Brabant Ensemble resist the temptation
to sex up this music: their studied and sensitive singing
is just right, rising to a modest climax in places on track
3. Stephen Rice, director of the Ensemble, in his excellent
notes which accompany this recording, describes these settings
as harrowing and, without forcing or exaggeration, the
performance manages to be exactly that. I have described
Couperin’s simpler settings as sometimes more arresting
and memorable than the more dramatic Charpentier and the
same is true of these Morales works when they are as well
performed as this.

Track 4 brings a more
extrovert work, Gaude et lætare, urging Ferrara
to rejoice at the appointment of Ippolito d’Este as a cardinal,
but even here the exuberance of the music and of the performance
is limited – perhaps Morales found it difficult to toady
up too much to the powerful d’Este family. Or perhaps he
was all too mindful of the failure of most cardinals to
observe the derivation of their title from the Latin word
for the hinges on which the church should hang. Just over
a century earlier, the poet Langland thought it best not
to offer an opinion of those “that cardinals ben called
and closynge yates/There crist is in kyngdom, to close
and to shette”, but his refusal to criticise these creaking
hinges speaks volumes:

Ac of þe Cardinals at
court þat kau3te of þat name
And power presumed in
hem a Pope to make
To han the power that
Peter hadde – impugnen I nelle –
For in loue and lettrure þe
eleccion bilongeþ;
Forþi I kan & kan
nau3t of court speke moore.
[But of the cardinals
at the papal court, who have grabbed that name and presumed
to have the power to make a Pope, to have the power that
Peter had, I won’t criticise them, for with love and learning
the papal election should be made; therefore I know, but
cannot speak any more about the court. Piers Plowman,
B Prologue, 107-111]

Matters had certainly
not improved by the time that Morales was in Rome in the
late 1530s: look at Julius exclusus a cœlis, Julius
shut out of heaven, a work which Erasmus always denied
he had written – but probably did – in which St Peter fails
to recognise the dead Pope Julius II as his successor when
he appears in armour and papal crown at the gate of Heaven.
(Collected Works of Erasmus, 27.168-97, Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1974-).

Whatever the reason, the
singing of The Brabant Ensemble in this piece exactly matches
my view of the piece as a work of moderated enthusiasm.
The next piece, Sancta Maria, succurre miseris, returns
to the mood of thoughtful penitence of the opening Lamentations.
The academic interest of this work lies in the link with
an earlier setting by Verdelot of the same words and with
subsequent settings by Morales’ student Guerrero and by
Victoria, each showing awareness of its immediate predecessor.
It is, however, of much more than academic interest when
it is as well performed as it is here.

Sancta Maria (track 6)
and the following Salve Regina, the antiphon to
Mary at the end of Compline from Trinity to Advent, are
Marian prayers of quiet penitence. The following track, Regina
cæli, the antiphon after Compline in Eastertide, though
a setting of joyful words – rejoice, Virgin Mary; he whom
you were worthy to bear has risen as he predicted – is
again a work of moderate rejoicing. You won’t find either
showy breast-beating or excessive elation in the music
of Morales on this CD or in these excellent performances,
but it is all quietly satisfying. It’s often said, with
justice, that Guerrero, despite his name (meaning ‘warrior’)
is the most placid of renaissance composers; perhaps that
was one of the traits that he learned from his teacher
Morales.

Spem in alium (track 8)
sets the words now indelibly associated with Tallis’s 40-part
work. The five-part Morales setting is far less elaborate
but well worth hearing, as also is Beati omnes (tr.9).
Again, the singing in both works is all that could be wished
for.

The recording is as ideal
as the performances – Merton Chapel offering a much better
acoustic than Christ Church Cathedral next door. (Nimbus
have exiled the Christ Church choristers to Dorchester
for their recordings, several miles down the road; couldn’t
they have borrowed the use of Merton?)

Everything comes together
exactly right, too, in the final and longest work on the
CD, the hitherto unrecorded four-part Magnificat primi
toni. Again, there’s no over-ambitious or showy writing
here, but that’s not to say that it’s run of the mill.
Just compare the excerpt offered on the Hyperion website
with the music of the four early Christ Church composers,
Pygott, Mason, Ashwell and Aston, whose roughly contemporary
music I recently reviewed on Nimbus and Metronome – see review – and
you’ll see what I mean: where they offer good, workmanlike
material, Morales cuts his music from better cloth and
tailors it better, but the result isn’t showy. It’s the
musical equivalent of the understated magnificence of Titian’s
painting of Isabella of Portugal, reproduced on the cover
of the Brabant Ensemble’s recording of the music of Crequillon
(CDA67596). Check out that painting in images on the web
and in art books, and you’ll find the red of the dress
exaggerated in some reproductions and looking washed out
in others. The Brabant Ensemble restore us the picture
as seen in the Prado, as it were – neither over-bright
nor faded.

The only reservation that
I have about recommending this recording concerns the wealth
of polyphonic music in excellent performances available
from Hyperion in their lower-priced Helios series, at less
than half the price of this new CD. I do hail from the
North of England, after all; over 40 years of living in
London haven’t impaired my love of a bargain. You won’t
find any of the Brabant Ensemble recordings on that budget
label – they’re too recent – but you will be able to build
up an excellent collection at low cost. Morales’ Christmas
Mass Queramus cum pastoribus features on the Helios
label (CDH55276, Westminster Cathedral Choir), as does
the music of Morales’ student Guerrero, which I recently
recommended (Missa Sancta et immaculata, CDH55313,
also Westminster Cathedral Choir – see review).

It’s sometimes said that
Westminster Cathedral Choir have a special affinity with
Spanish and Italian polyphony; be that as it may, their
singing in this music is excellent. You may prefer their
use of boys’ voices – and boys free of the ‘hoot’ that
sometimes afflicts the trebles of Anglican choirs – but
that would be the only reason to reject these Brabant Ensemble
recordings. I can’t wait to catch up with their earlier
CDs.

Looking around for possible
rivals to this recording, I noted that we don’t seem to
have reviewed an excellent Chandos recording by Nordic
Voices (CHSA5050) including music by Morales and contemporaries,
issued last
year,
so good that I must give its details more fully than usual:

Reges terræ: Music from the Time
of Charles VPierre
de Manchicourt (c.1510 –1564) Reges
terræ, Laudate Dominum, O Virgo virginum, Agnus Dei (from Missa ‘Reges
terræ’)Cristóbal
de Morales (c.1500 –1553) Regina
cæli, Exaltata est
sancta Dei GenitrixJacobus
Clemens ‘non
Papa’ (c.1510/15 –1555/56) O
magnum mysteriumFrancisco
Guerrero (1528 –1599) Hei mihi,
DomineNicolas
Gombert (c.1495 – c. 1560) Ego
sum qui sumThis excellent recording is, in fact, better regarded as an additional
recommendation rather than as a rival to the four Brabant
Ensemble recordings, since there is very little overlap
of material. Nordic Voices, a small ensemble of up to six – the
personnel varies slightly between the items – sing, if
anything, even more enticingly than the Brabant performers
but trying to choose between performances this good is
invidious. Nordic Voices do tend towards fastish tempi – compare
their 3:15 for Guerrero’s Hei mihi with the Westminster
Choristers’ 4:40 on CDH55313. For the most part, they don’t
sound rushed; just occasionally I thought that their enthusiasm
got the better of them and they had to work to pull the
performance back together, but that’s far better than safe
mediocrity. (Not that either the Brabant or Westminster
singers are guilty of that.) The repertoire is more varied
than on the single-composer Hyperion CDs, and the recording
is superb, even in ordinary stereo.

Is there a fly in this ointment that would have prevented me from
giving this CD thumbs-up or even making it Recording of
the Month if it had come to me as review disc in the normal
order of things? Well, yes, look at the recording time
of 48:52 – the Hyperion CD is exactly half as long again.
I’ve complained about similar timings on Hyperion Helios
reissues, but some of them were made at a time when LP
and cassette releases were still taking place alongside
CDs; surely there is no excuse for such a short time today
on a full-price release. Another, more minor grumble: Chandos
are capable of producing some very attractive covers, but
this one is plain dull by comparison with the Hyperion
covers and with those of the Gimell recording listed below.

If you’re looking for more music by Morales, in addition to
the Helios CD which I’ve mentioned, there is a Gimell recording
of the Mass Si bona suscepimus (CDGIM033) to which
Gary Dalkin awarded the highest 5-star accolade (see review);
see also a brief but equally appreciative review by
Peter Woolf. Thanks to a CD-quality download from the Gimell
website, I was able to listen
to this recording. I hate to distinguish between performances
and recordings of such high quality but, if forced to choose
only one of these Morales recordings, it would be the Gimell
by a very fine margin.

As the two recordings are not going head to head, however,
in terms of overlapping repertoire – and even the Crequillon
work which concludes the Gimell CD, Andreas Christi familus,
does not duplicate the Brabant Ensemble’s Crequillon recording;
if deliberate, a wise decision on Hyperion’s part – you
ought to try to purchase both. Whether you download the
Gimell – preferably in the lossless format, which is still
less expensive than the CD – or buy it on disc, you will
also have access to as attractive and informative a booklet
as on the new Hyperion. My Northern parsimony just baulks
at one detail – the Gimell playing time of 56:01 is somewhat
better than Chandos’s 48:52 on Nordic Voices’ Reges
terræ, but it is still short by comparison with
Hyperion’s 72:39.

I am very pleased to have extended my acquaintance with Morales – and
with some of his contemporaries on CHSA5050 – on these
three excellent recordings.

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